Celliers andDe Volksstem

Published in The Transvaal Philatelist Vol. 40, no. 4 (156), November 2005, pages 102 to 105. Copies of this issue are still available

Following his inauguration as President of the South African Republic (1st July, 1872), Thomas François Burgers
recognised the need for a local newspaper in Dutch, the official language of the Transvaal. During a visit to the Cape,
Burgers asked Jan François Celliers, who was living in Cape Town and working as a journalist on the staff of Het Volksblad,
to estimate the cost of establishing a newspaper in Pretoria. Celliers stated in a letter dated the 21st November, 1872,
that he would be prepared to be editor of such a newspaper. Celliers left for Pretoria in April 1873 and the first edition of the newspaper
De Volksstem was issued on 8th September 1873.

With James Cooper Rous he published the Staatscourant (Government Gazettes) and De Volksstem . Rous refers to himself as the 'printer' at
De Volksstem in 1875, the year of the first Stamp Commission issues.

Celliers and Rous continued as partners in the publishing business until Rous died in 1876. The first stamp issues printed on behalf of the Stamp Commission must have appeared while Rous was also involved in the venture. In 1876 P.W.T. Bell was appointed as head printer.

Celliers became a vociferous critic of British annexation and administration of the Transvaal after 1877. Not surprisingly De Volksstem
lost the contract for government work.

The treaty to end the First Anglo-Boer war was signed on the 3rd August, 1881, after which the contract for government printing was
again awarded to Celliers, Bell continuing as printer.

After selling De Volksstem c.1888, Celliers became Member of Parliament for the gold fields of de Kaap in the lowveld. He died on 4th March, 1895.

Historical fact dictates that we should attribute the actual physical printing of the stamps attributed to Celliers, at least in part, to James
Cooper Rous and P.W.T. Bell. Rous and Bell were the printers in charge from the time of the first Stamp Commission issue on the 29th April, 1875,
until Rous' demise in 1876. Thereafter Bell was responsible. The role they played is comparable to the roles played by other printers of stamps issued by
the South African Republic: Otto, Viljoen, Borrius and Davis. The so-called 'Celliers' issue of 1883 is incorrectly attributed to Celliers, who never
trained as a printer, and should more accurately be called the 'Bell' issue.